Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 217 for the weeks October 17th - November 7th, 2010.

In This Issue

UWN Catchup, Help the Graner Family

Ubuntu 11.04 to Ship Unity

Unity on Wayland

Emmet Hickory replaces Richard Johnson on Community Council

Ubuntu Cloud Community Needs You

Yes, we did it: SpreadUbuntu.com is up now!

Ubuntu Stats

First Mountain View Ubuntu Hour

Meet Ian Booth

New Features for Bug Supervisors

Stéphane Graber: Edubuntu live now available online

Daniel Holbach: Much Imporved Harvest Online Again

Randall Ross: Wither Brainstorm

Matt Zimmerman: Ubuntu and Qt

Valorie Zimmerman: Listening to Our Better Angels

Raphaël Hertzog: Managing distribution-specific patches with a common source package

Jorge Castro: How I use Banshee

Ubuntu, open source apps use on the rise: Linux Users Group

Donate your bandwidth to support Ubuntu downloads

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: One Hit, One Miss

Level Up to IPv6 with Ubuntu 10.10 on Comcast

Boosting Ubuntu's Productivity: 20 Tips

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10: Usability vs. Constraints

Banshee becomes Ubuntu 11.04 default music player

Mark Shuttleworth talks about Project Harmony, Unity, Windicators and more

Mark Shuttleworth denies move to "Open Core"

London Stock Exchange Sets a New World Record in Trade Speed Using Linux

Canonical Highlights Touch Support on Ubuntu Netbooks

Ubuntu UK Podcast S03E19 - If we only knew

Full Circle Podcast #13: The One Where You’re a Rabbit

Ucasts 0003: Update Manager Introduction

Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Updates and Security

UWN Sneak Peek

General Community News

UWN Catchup, Help the Graner Family

We've been a bit silent over the last three weeks. This has been in part due to the very busy Ubuntu Developer Summit, but also because our great editor, Amber Graner had the misfortune of her house being burnt down during UDS leaving nothing left. Fortunately, her family (including the dog) are safe and unharmed.

This issue will be a bulk issue covering news items from the last three weeks. If we missed something, please let us know and we'll be delighted to include it in the next issue.

A fundraiser has been established to help the Graner family. If you are interested, please read further on the Ubuntu-News site:

Ubuntu 11.04 to Ship Unity

Mark Shuttleworth just announced at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando that we will be shipping the Unity environment in the Ubuntu desktop edition. Unity is the environment we shipped on the Ubuntu Netbook Edition for the first time in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, and users and OEMs have been enjoying the experience. It is an environment that is inspired by great design, touch, and a strong and integrated experience.

I think this is a fantastic opportunity for Free Software, and this is going to be a busy cycle. We have a lot of work to do, and we know that quality is a firm focus for this release, and we have identified a solid set of issues we need to focus on and resolve, but I know the final product will be something that we will all be proud of. Another key focus is performance; we have already started porting Unity from Mutter to Compiz and the initial work is much faster, most notably on hardware that has traditionally had the most trouble from bug reports. Quality meets design meets performance. Together as a community we can make this rock.

There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME applications, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives.

Unity on Wayland

Mark Shuttleworth announced on his blog that the next major step for Unity is to deliver it on the Wayland display server. While this will be a big transition for Ubuntu, Mark states that it doesn't need to cause a reset in the way we run software. Software that will not be ported to work with the new display server will still be able to run under an X server compatibility mode.

Ubuntu Cloud Community Needs You

"I'm interested in Ubuntu and the cloud, how do I get involved" is a question I got a few times already. I thought it would be a good idea to answer this as a blog post. I believe one of the very first things you'd want to do, is to make sure you're on the main communication channels, talking to the community, asking questions, seeing other questions being answered, trying to answer some yourself, sharing opinions and generally "connecting" with the rest of the community. That is a great first step. So I'll highlight the main communication venues for the Ubuntu cloud community, as well as a way to get kick-started.

Places to be:

Ubuntu Cloud Forums, while pretty young, there has been a pretty good stir in the forums. While IRC and mailing lists may be more focused on "asking questions", the Forums are a great way to get in touch with other community members. To share your experience building your private clouds, the hardware used, software configuration, tuning and optimization, challenges faced, ... Come and join in, if you would like to ask questions, or if you would like to share opinions, tips or tricks, get on the forums and make a splash

The Ubuntu-Cloud mailing list is a great technical resource where most of the experts and developers are subscribed. For very technical discussions, questions, feature suggestions, RFEs and development discussions then the mailing list is a great resource.

The EC2Ubuntu mailing list is a great resource that focuses on running Ubuntu in the Amazon EC2 public cloud. This list is active with a wealth of information on the topic.

IRC chat has long always been a primary real-time communication tool used by free software enthusiasts. The Ubuntu cloud IRC room is (surprise, surprise) #ubuntu-cloud on Freenode. Jump in, and engage

Once connected, the things that you can do include playing with the latest technology, such as creating yourself a private UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) instance, verifying that the latest features work as advertised, reporting and fixing bugs, suggesting features, designing and implementing new projects to advance the state of Ubuntu on the cloud. Whilst the community is very welcoming, I definitely understand that we need to create better new-comer friendly engagement paths—more hand-holding if you will. A better mentoring programme from senior members as well as low-hanging fruit are things that the Ubuntu cloud and server communities need to identify and improve in order to make it easier to attract and engage fresh talent.

Yes, we did it: SpreadUbuntu.com is up now!

Ruben Romero updates us to let us know that the new Spreadubuntu.com website is up and ready for use. Spreadubuntu is a community website where user contributed marketing materials are made available for remixing and general consumption.

LoCo News

First Mountain View Ubuntu Hour

Elizabeth Krumbach reports back on the first ever Ubuntu Hour held in Mountain View, California. Thirteen people attended, and proposals for more Ubuntu Hours, in other regions close by are in the works. Read Liz's blog entry for more details on what the Californian LoCo team have been up to!

Launchpad News

Meet Ian Booth

Ian is the latest addition to the Launchpad Code team, associated with managing and importing branches, merge proposals, code reviews; Bazaar-Launchpad integration; the XML-RPC and web services APIs. Matthew Revell interviews him and find out more about why he's interested in Launchpad.net.

New Features for Bug Supervisors

Deryck Hodge provides an update on new features being rolled out out on Launchpad as the team moves to a continuous deployment model. There are some bug fixes that have been rolled out that affects how tags are treated, who are able to set targets and locking of the "Fix Released" status. Read Deryck's post for all the details.

The Planet

Stéphane Graber: Edubuntu live now available online

Edubuntu has been available on Live DVD for a few releases now, but what if a DVD is too big for you just to try it out? Stéphane reports on a new web based live system that allows you to try out Edubuntu from within your browser. In the future users will also be able to try out development releases without having to download or install. http://www.stgraber.org/2010/10/17/edubuntu-live-now-available-online

Daniel Holbach: Much Imporved Harvest Online Again

Daniel reports that Harvest, the tool for locating easy opportunities to get involved in Ubuntu is now back online. The new version is written in Django, it now has a release cycle and also includes package set information. There was also a Harvest session at UDS for those who were interested in getting involved with the project.

Randall Ross: Wither Brainstorm

Randall comments on the lack of development currently happening around ideas in Ubuntu Brainstorm. Brainstorm is a website where users can submit ideas and vote them up or down. Randall urged developers attending UDS-N to give Brainstorm a visit and look at the top ideas.

Matt Zimmerman: Ubuntu and Qt

Matt has been thinking about Qt recently and how it may apply to Ubuntu's desire to allow making applications easier and more efficient. Matt notes that Qt has a good history on ARM as well as x86, that Qt is cross-platform among all major operating systems and that it already has a fairly mature touch input system.

Valorie Zimmerman: Listening to Our Better Angels

Valorie talks about assaults against women that have occurred recently within free software communities and that these happen more often than many of us realize. She talks about her experiences in the Ubuntu community and how she feels that the Code of Conduct makes the Ubuntu community a safer environment for everyone. Valorie calls on other projects to implement similar codes and comments about some of the newer conduct discussions currently taking place in the Ubuntu community.

Raphaël Hertzog: Managing distribution-specific patches with a common source package

Raphaël walks us through a new feature in the Debian 3.0 (quilt) source package format that allows a packager to apply a patch to a specific distribution. This feature can be incredibly handy to a package maintainer who would, for example, like a patch to be applied in the Ubuntu version but not in the Debian versuib, allowing the change to be made just once and reducing future packaging efforts.

Jorge Castro: How I use Banshee

Jorge walks us through how he usually uses Banshee on a day-to-day basis, demonsrated with an informative and instructional video. The video covers how to manage your play queues and also how Banshee remembers which songs you've skipped before, and at what point, in order to guess which songs you would like to hear next.

In The Press

Ubuntu, open source apps use on the rise: Linux Users Group

Diana Nguyen from Techworld interviews Melissa Draper from Sydney's LUG. "Linux is breaking into wider mainstream use in Australia, with schools and government agencies leading the charge", says Melissa. "… The majority of computer users just need to be able to type up a report, send an email, read blogs, and watch funny cat videos on YouTube.” Draper also attributed the increasing use of Ubuntu in more educational institutions, government agencies and businesses to its affordability. For the full article, please go to:

Donate your bandwidth to support Ubuntu downloads

Phil Shapiro from an online edition of Computerworld explains the difficulty in downloading an Ubuntu ISO shortly after the release. He invites users to utilize BitTorrent technology in order to help others get more bandwidth when downloading the releases. For the full article go to:

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat: One Hit, One Miss

Doug Roberts from the Linux Journal tests two editions of the new Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat release. His desktop edition test was perfect, but the netbook edition - UNE - was far from that, which is a "miss" in his book. Doug's full article is available at:

Level Up to IPv6 with Ubuntu 10.10 on Comcast

David Ames from Linux.com breaks the news about Comcast allowing you to use IPv6 on its network and shows you how to configure an Ubuntu 10.10 system to use this feature. "If Comcast is your ISP, you can get started using IPv6 on Linux right away, with just a few simple steps. Ready to join the next-generation network? We'll show you how to get Ubuntu 10.10 on Comcast IPv6 in no time", says David. For the full tutorial please go to:

Boosting Ubuntu's Productivity: 20 Tips

Matt Hartley from the Datamation (an internet.com publication) offers 20 tips that "...saved me countless hours of wasted time, while making my life with Ubuntu easier in general". These include tips for backing up your data automatically, ideas for updating Ubuntu at specific times, using various utilities like Gnome Do for enhancing productivity, tips for using email securely, and many others. For the full list of tips go to:

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10: Usability vs. Constraints

Bruce Byfield, from the Datamation reviews latest edition of the UNE (the Ubuntu Netbook Edition) and discusses the constraints of the small screen computers and usability issues that come as a result. He also has a critique of the choices the were made for this edition of Ubuntu and raises some problems that he had with the interface. For the full article, please go to:

Mark Shuttleworth talks Project Harmony, Unity, Windicators and more

In Other News

Mark Shuttleworth denies move to Open Core

Bradley Kuhn blogged about Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Q&A Session from the Ubuntu Open Week and commented specifically on some parts that he's skeptical of. Specifically, he made some assumptions about Canonical's strategy which Mark Shuttleworth provided some clarity on in an interview with ITwire.

London Stock Exchange Sets a New World Record in Trade Speed Using Linux

The London Stock Exchange is claiming that it has set a new world record in trade speeds, this comes as a result of the implementation of a new Linux based core to their systems, moving away from a Microsoft .NET technology that had previously in use for a few years. This switchover occurred in tandem with a recent study by Fortune Magazine which claimed that corporate America is choosing open source solutions ahead of proprietary alternatives. For the full article, follow the link below:

Glossary of Terms

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It is your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate